In my series on The “free” (i.e. genuine) offer of the Gospel, I pointed out in this post Berkhof’s reply to a hypercalvinist that Berkhof believes that the justified, can, in this life, also be in some sense under God’s wrath.  I wrote,

it is well worth asking how we are to interpret the destructive forces of nature, but such a question cannot reduce the plain meaning of Jesus’ words to absurdity, unless God can be guilty of absurdity, which is blasphemous to contemplate. Perhaps we need to ask if we have not created more trouble than necessary by absolutizing the distinction between God’s “Fatherly displeasure” and His “wrath,” between “discipline” and “chastisement” on the one hand, and “punishment” on the other. As Louis Berkhof asks rhetorically: “Are the elect in this life the objects of God’s love only, and never in any sense the objects of His wrath? Is Moses thinking of the reprobate when he says: ‘For we are consumed in thine anger, and in thy wrath we are troubled’? Psa 90.7.”[Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1941), p. 445.] It is a profound truth and great comfort that all things, including sufferings, work ultimately to our good as Christians. The question is whether that fact necessitates that all things are alike and in the same way to be considered “good” simply because of the future result in glory.

In context, Berkhof can only be talking about the elect after they are converted.  So, in reply to Hoeksema, Berkhof thought it was possible to look at the Bible and see that these justified people were also, in some sense, under God’s wrath.  Perhaps we should always use scare-quotes for “wrath,” in this case, like the actor I saw who re-enacted the Gospel of Luke (which was actually a pastiche that included John) and made quotation marks with his fingers while he played Jesus saying that his flesh was true “bread.”

But there are no scare quotes in Psalm 90.7.  And if it is possible for God to be angry and wrathful with the justified in some way, it seems equally plausible to say that unregenerate professing believers are, until they manifest their hard hearts in rebellion, in some sense relatively right with God compared to those who refuse to respond to the Gospel.